https://brill.com/view/journals/hima/26/4/article-p35_2.

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Historical Materialism 26.4 (2018) 35–58

brill.com/hima

Marx’s Reading of Spinoza: On the Alleged

Influence of Spinoza on Marx

Bernardo Bianchi
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
bernardobianchi@gmail.com

Abstract

In this article, I investigate a hypothesis concerning the supposed influence of Spinoza

on Marx’s works. Setting out from a comment made by Althusser – ‘[Spinoza] is the
only direct ancestor of Marx’ – I try to demonstrate that even though the relationship
between Spinoza and Marx has limited support at a historiographical level, a deter-
mined set of ideas of Spinoza can be connected to some of Marx’s political objectives
in the period prior to 1845. This argument is supported through Marx’s notebooks de-
voted to studying Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, written in 1841, and his refuta-
tion of Spinoza in The Holy Family. However, contrary to what could be expected, when
Marx abandoned his most pronounced idealistic phase, within which Spinoza played a
certain role, he rebelled against Spinozism at the same time. Nonetheless, it is one thing
to repudiate Spinoza’s name, and a very different thing to repudiate Spinoza’s ideas.

Keywords

Marx – Spinoza – materialism – liberty – freedom of conscience – democracy

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/1569206X-00001482